PIUS XII REHABILITATED BY JEWISH HISTORIAN

New Documents Prove Nazis Distrusted Him for Helping Jews

ROME, JULY 7 (ZENIT.org).- "Hitler distrusted the Holy See
because it hid Jews," stated Jewish historian Richard Breitman.
He has written 5 books, one of which is on the Holocaust, and
another on Nazism. Breitman confirms the role played by Pius XII
in defending and safeguarding the persecuted during the Nazi
regime.

Th professor at American University in Washington, is a
consultant for the working group for the restitution of Jewish
property, which group has obtained the declassification of the
OSS dossier. In an interview with the Italian newspaper "Corriere
della Sera" on June 29, Breitman (who to date is the only person
authorized to study the OSS documents of U.S. espionage during
the Second World War), explained that the documents "are only the
tip of the iceberg. Over the next 3 years, additional millions of
pages will be made public. But what impressed him most in regard
to Italy, was German hostility toward the Pope, and the September
1943 plan to "Germanize" the country. Breitman also found "the
Allied silence on the Holocaust surprising. Their first
testimonies are from the end of 1942..."

Asked about relations between Pius XII and the Germans, Breitam
responded: "In general, the Germans considered the Pope as an
enemy. In a telegram, someone suggested to play on his old
anti-communism, to induce him to 'understand' Nazism, and to take
him from Rome to the north: the Vatican and Germany would have
formed a common front against the USSR, and the Vatican would
fall under Berlin's control. But the proposal was rejected
because the majority knew that Pius XII would never leave Rome,
and that the Vatican was on the side of the Allies."

How did they know it? "The Nazis had spies in the Vatican. Among
their dispatches deciphered by our espionage one spoke of an
Allied plan to disembark in Sardinia, another of the departure of
a diplomatic train with Jews on board, transported from Rome to
Spain. Only the Vatican was up-to-date, the Nazi 'moles' told
general Karl Wolff, SS chief in Italy. Berlin distrusted the Pope
and the Vatican, because it knew they hid Jews."

Breitman's statements in part deny the thesis of those who at
present speak of Pius XII as "Hitler's Pope" and, at the same
time, confirm the hypotheses, advanced at other times by Catholic
historians and researchers, according to whom the OSS documents
and those of the corresponding British secret service, would
result in demonstrating how great and meritorious was the action
carried out by the Vatican in favor of the persecuted. Sadly, the
respective U.S. and British dispatches have to date denied
Catholic historians permission to see these documents but, sooner
or later, truth will end up in the public domain.

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